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Send Your Buddies A Beer Via Twitter

No time to make a beer run for friends? Now you can buy a beer for your buddies via Twitter.

A new app called Tweet-a-Beer allows users to send a beer? to friends on Twitter along with a 140-character message announcing the good news, an article at MSN Money explains.

What's actually being sent is a $5 credit on PayPal to more or less cover the cost of the beer.

Still, it's a fun concept to familiarize people with making small value transaction payments over mobile devices, notes a payments processing expert at US Dataworks. We need more fun examples like this to boost the rate of mobile adoption.

An advertising agency and public relations firm developed the Tweet-a-Beer app to ensure that distance, agoraphobia and gang rivalries no longer prevent you from sharing a pint, according to the MSN Money article. The app is more about fostering networking than making money.

To tweet beer money to your friends, users first must authenticate their Twitter account with the commerce site Chirpify. Then you can start buying beers for followers in $5 increments. (Chirpify deducts 10 cents for processing, so you're actually sending $4.90.)

The recipients can decline or refund the money to your PayPal account, ignore the Tweet or use the money in their PayPal account however they choose.

Keep in mind that all of your other followers will see that you're buying someone else a beer, so buy responsibly and wisely.